Gordon Monahan's works for piano, loudspeakers, video, kinetic sculpture, and computer-controlled sound environments span various genres from avant-garde concert music to multi-media installation and sound art. As a composer and sound artist, he juxtaposes the quantitative and qualitative aspects of natural acoustical phenomena with elements of media technology, environment, architecture, popular culture, and live performance. The renowned composer John Cage once said, "At the piano, Gordon Monahan produces sounds we haven't heard before."

Gordon Monahan is the recipient of a 2013 Governor-General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. He won First Prize at the 1984 CBC National Radio Competition for Young Composers, as well as commissions from the Vancouver New Music Society;  CBC Radio;  Dade County Art in Public Places, Miami; The Kitchen, New York; the DAAD Inventionen Festival, Berlin, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, Donaueschingen, Germany, the Sony Center, Berlin, the Coleman-Lemieux Dance Company, Montreal, and the Warsaw Autumn Festival in Poland. Monahan has been Artist-in-Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts (1990),  the Exploratorium in San Francisco (1991), D.A.A.D., Berlin (1992-93), the Western Front, Vancouver (1999), Podewil, Berlin (2002), and Recto-Verso, Quebec City (2011-12).